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My Story: The Early Years

September 1, 2011 in Spirituality & Prayer, Uncategorized with 10 Comments

Several people have asked me to tell a bit of my story. I thought it not a bad idea, so I’ll begin today and probably pick it up a couple days from now.

Once upon a time I was in the Presbyterian Church in America. See? I really was:

JRDK Rocks the PCA Uni.

No. Wait. I can’t start there. Let’s back up a bit.

Let’s start with 99.44%.

I know, you think this is going to be an Ivory Soap commercial. But Ivory Soap does not have exclusive claim to 99.44% Well, o.k., maybe it does.

So let’s start with 99.4%

Or, 6 out of 1,000.

Or, the number of women who become pregnant in the first year of using an Intrauterine Device (IUD). Like my mom.

Common Intrauterine Device

Basically what I’m saying is this: I had to stick it to The Man (woman?) who was tryin’ to keep a brother down to even get into this world.

Here, you might start to imagine that the story as it began above, with jrdk in the PCA, will not end well.

At any rate, we must move on past my primordial fight for survival into the throes of kindergarten. And crayons.

Yes, crayons.

Imagine the scene: a group of kindergarteners walks into art class, where we fill in the tables vacated by the previous hour’s second graders.

Big Crayons for Small Hands?

There, splayed out in all their glory, are good ol’ Crayolas.

But the teacher says, “The crayons on the tables were from the big kids’ class. You guys will want to use the bigger crayons because they’re better for your little hands.”

To this, of course, my 5-year-old mind retorted, silently, “That’s dumb. If we have smaller hands, we should be using smallercrayons.”

Although such a posture would wear off in time (obviously!), my five year old self was apparently quite sure of itself when it came to matters academic. More importantly, it was once again clear that if I was going to thrive in this world, I would have to get past The Man (or woman?) who was, once again, trying to keep a brother down.

From an early age the need to fight for what is right was part of my daily experience.

At this point you might be thinking back to the direction the story is heading, with jrdk in the PCA, and thinking that the scene ends badly, as you might imagine, in a cavalcade of anger and fear. Oops, I slipped into Mountain Goats lyrics. Sorry about that.

Where was I? Oh yes, my story…

Skipping ahead a bit, the theologically non-committal moderate Southern Baptist theology I grew up with took a back seat when I was in college. I took a course from Ralph Wood my first semester at Wake Forest University. We read Shirley Guthrie (a.k.a. “baby Barth,” C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. And we fought about theology.

After a full 15 weeks of asking a different sort of question of the Bible, the traditional theological questions of predestination and the like, I was rapidly becoming a Calvinist without having ever read Calvin.

Of course, I debated matters for a while–at least a couple semesters. But come on, Paul says “predestined,” so let’s not have any of this foolishness about “predestined really means foreknowledge.” Besides, what does Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem, that he wanted to gather her but she was unwilling–what does that have to do with anything? Take your Americana Freedom notions and get them out of my Bible!

As you can see, at the ripe old age of 17, I was well on my way to becoming a Presbyterian.

Four

August 11, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

Lacking the mental bandwidth to finish the post I started this morning, I bless you with the following scene from some hospital in Philadelphia. Four years ago today, despite some doctor’s apparent conviction that childbirth is a disease to be treated with sundry drugs and hospitalizations, all sorts of marvelous life-changing things happened.

Like singing “Happy Birthday” to little dude for the first time.

Happy birthday, little dude!

Working With My Hands

February 28, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

My first real job (after babysitting and newspaper delivery, of course) was for The Sign Post, Inc. It was for a company that did the kind of work you’d never expect someone would have to do: putting up, taking down, maintaining, and painting the wooden for sale signs that people put up in front of their houses.
This beauty to our right is a prime example: note that there are two bolts, not one, holding the arm on–that’s huge for stability. The corners are nicely trimmed as well. This is exactly the model that we would use. Our high-quality installation included using gravel, rather than merely dirt, to pack the sign into the yard.

Our competition was not so high quality on many of these points.

I got very familiar with post hole diggers, digging bars, gravel, the importance of locating places to get rid of the morning’s coffee, and the like.

Some of the guys I worked with thought it was a terrible job.

I didn’t think so. If I were lucky, got to ride around in trucks or vans with my brother, or with Dave or Jeff from my youth group, listen to the music I liked on the radio, do some good, hard, manual labor, and make a few bucks to boot.

I had a flood of memories about this experience as I took post hole diggers in hand to put up a little fencing over the weekend.

We have chickens. Soon they will need to be moved from the garage and heat lamp into the great outdoors. Apparently, we don’t want them destroying the whole yard, so we’re relegating them to the back quarter of it. So I had to build a fence. (In case you’re wondering, it’s backed with chicken wire to keep the little buggers from getting through.)

But remembering my days at The Sign Post, Inc., was not the only remembrance prompted by my labor. I also was reminded to be thankful that my vocational stability does not depend on my ability to work with my hands.

You’d think that simple tasks like digging a hole, measuring for the next one, screwing in some boards, and cutting a section of fence would be pretty much a no-brainer.

I’m not sure about “brain,” but good eyes and hands are required for even the most simple household project, and I seem to lack such implements.

There’s an old saying, “Measure twice, cut once.” I measure 5 or 6 times, cut once, and then have to make adjustments because things end up too long or too short.

Even the most simple house hold projects remind me to be thankful that I have the luxury of writing, of teaching, of doing all sorts of things that require next to zero eye-hand coordination to accomplish them successfully. The liability that is my hands and eyes becomes an asset in the classroom as I make fun of my own drawings on the board and thus regain the students’ attention for another 35 seconds.

So I will never be a finish carpenter (or a Finnish carpenter, for that matter), but I’m reminded in that failure that I have other victories to be thankful for.

Not only do I have a great job that keeps me from having to relive my Sign Post, Inc. experience every day, I think I also managed to build something that will keep the chickens in their place.

Pride & Perfection

October 24, 2010 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments

I don’t think it takes much time watching and taking notes before you realize that pride and insecurity tend to be two sides of the same coin. The same people who come across as most proud are often, at the same time and for the same reasons (thank you, Barth), the most insecure.

Lately I’ve been pondering a corollary, tied to perfectionism.

I think this can play out in two seemingly opposite ways. On the one hand, someone who is a perfectionist can be so tied to an ideal that nothing s/he produces is ever good enough, and therefore s/he ends up hating it, smashing it, burning it, etc. (This would be the “insecurity” side of perfectionism.)

But someone who is a perfectionist can also be so tied in and of himself to the things he creates, that he assumes they are all perfect as they go forth, and can never bear to part with a one of them. (This would be the pride side of perfectionism.) Such a person could never bear the thought of something going unused, a picture going unseen, a song going unheard, a thought going untrumpeted. Because not only is the world in need of perfection–here it is, incarnate!

I’m sure there’s a moral here if we dig for it. Maybe something along the lines of, “People wanting perfection may as readily take the guise of unwillingness to pursue it as a meticulous, single-minded devotion to doing something well.”

Jesus, Judaism, and Us

October 10, 2010 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments

Yesterday I posted some thoughts on the importance of Jerusalem in Luke. In particular, I was struck by the ways that the Gospel locates Jerusalem at the center of God’s plan for redemption–but also its destruction at the center of God’s judgment on those who reject the son.

And it struck me that this is a dangerous thing to say.

Christianity has a dark history of anti-Semitism, a recurring pattern of heaping special scorn on non-Christian Judaism, an ever-present temptation to enact against Jewish people what see as in imitation of the judgment of God.

So the question: Is it possible to recognize this component of the biblical narrative, even to confess its interpretation of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and withstand the dangerous theological ramifications that have plagued Christian history?

I think there is a relatively simple reading strategy that will allow us to be good readers and read in such a way that our life becomes an embodiment, rather than denial, of the gospel of the Kingdom.

When we read we have to place ourselves in the role of the presumed insiders. This does not mean the side of Jesus, who comes as a prophetic voice calling the purported insiders to a new vision of the work of God. It means to place ourselves in the positions of the Jewish leaders among Jesus’ contemporaries. It means to expect that when Jesus calls forth repentance that we are the ones going astray.

It means that when Jesus erects himself, his power, and his suffering, as the means by which God is calling their entire way of seeking to please God into question that this same Jesus, this same administration of power, and this same suffering stand as measures against which our own attempts at God-pleasing are likely being shown to be wanting.

It means that when Jesus erects himself, his power, and his suffering, as the means by which God is calling their entire way of reading and applying the Bible that this same Jesus, this same administration of power, and this same suffering stand as measures against which our own attempts at faithfully applying the Bible are likely being shown to be wanting.

If we can learn to read the Bible again, to hear it not as word to the other people who are getting it wrong, but to our own propensity for creating our Jesus-following after our own image, then the world around us will have nothing to fear. By recognizing that Jesus was, in fact, speaking a word of judgment to the people of God, we who claim to be God’s people confess that this is a word of judgment spoken not to them but to us.

Judgment begins with the house of God. And we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit of God indwells us as its house.

So yes, these words were spoken about them, to them. And that’s precisely why they come back upon us.

Evangelicalism: McKnight Clears the Bases

October 8, 2010 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments

Over at Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight has banked his response to the Christianity Today essay on Al Mohler. The article spurred my own thoughts about the future of evangelicalism earlier this week (Manifesto, & addendum).

Here’s the heart of McKnight’s post:

Here’s my big point:Evangelicalism is changing. What used to be called “fundamentalist” is now occupied by the word “evangelical” and we have in the case of Mohler a genuine fundamentalist — and I’m using this word analytically and not derisively — who is reshaping evangelicalism because he’s reshaping the SBC… What we also are witnessing is the end of generous evangelicalism, what I often call Big Tent Evangelicalism that has been noted by a coalition of gospel-oriented people.

This is the concern that I expressed in my follow up, when I argued for conviction without sectarianism. The challenge of keeping space at the table for a broad coalition of gospel confession Christians is not one that this new evangelicalism is interested in pursuing.

Quite the contrary, those with powerful voices of leadership, who are fighting for the term, are interested in making the evangelical world smaller. And those with moderate positions aren’t interested in fighting for anything. But if we don’t care, we also will have no right to complain when there is no more space for us in North American evangelicalism.

As I quipped to a colleague, who said she wasn’t concerned about the conservative activists such as the Al Mohlers of the world: “Neither were the moderate Southern Baptists in 1982.”

Thanks for adding your voice to this, Scot. I think that what’s happening is a pretty big deal.

The Wall as the Key to Stayin’ Alive?

October 7, 2010 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

Frightening.

And wonderful.

Bible in Society

October 6, 2010 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments

Over on the Q website there is a video in which several Christian leaders talk about the role of Bible in society, including how we should describe the Bible (inerrant or not? etc.). The video is most interesting from my point of view as something descriptive of where different Christians are.

The participants are Tim Keller, Brian McLaren, Alister McGrath, and Dempsey Rosales-Acosta (whose name they didn’t see fit to write on the website [?!]).

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the talks was that none of the speakers was particularly compelling. Brian M. came across as both condescending and inarticulate in his attempts to belittle positions on the Bible more conservative than his own. Tim Keller has a great pastoral heart but grounds inerrancy on his experience that people can’t understand not-inerrant and authoritative being held onto at the same time. (Really? Those smart people in NY can’t figure that out, despite the fact that millions of Christians all over the world live with just that sort of tension?)

Alister M. was the refreshing voice from the U.K. asking us why we have our knickers in a wad about all this.

Perhaps the most intriguing part was the stories told by both McLaren and Keller about reading the Bible with non-Christians. Now that’s something I could get behind.

Take a look. See what you think.

Communion Story

October 3, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Uncategorized with 5 Comments

From what I’m seeing on the Twitter feed, it looks like to day is World Communion Sunday. I tend to think that the phrase is redundant, since gathering as the body of Christ is defined by, among one or two other things, partaking of that body which we otherwise are as a people. But that’s a rant for another day. Prepare yourselves for that rant by taking communion every week like Jesus wants you to.

One reason I love communion so much is that it sums up in itself all that I’m on about when I go on about “narrative theology” or “storied theology.”

The ritual we participate in both reminds us of the story that defines us as a people and writes us into that story.

When the Israelites took their Passover meal, one of the more important moments was the declaration, “We were slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out…” I love the language of “we”. Not “they,” as though this applies to our ancestors and not to us. No, by taking the meal the Israelites became, afresh, the “Passover people,” the “Exodus people,” the people whom YHWH brought out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

I think this is part of why what Jesus does at Passover is so striking. A new meal that will forever change the identity of the people of God and, therefore, change the identity of God as that is wrapped up with his rescued people.

Jesus takes bread and says, “This is my body given for you.” And so we are now the cross people, the people who were given new life by self giving. And, we are a people who are bound to one another as that body which we take. We are one. We are cruciform. That is the story that made us, and it is the story we are called to narrate in our life together.

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The day has come, the fulfillment of Jeremiah, when we will no longer say, “As YHWH lives who brought us up out of the land of Egypt…” because we have a new covenant. A new way of being faithful to God. The name of Israel’s God is now bound to this new work of giving up the son. And, we partake of the blood. The life blood.

It always strikes me as fascinating that the OT is full of indications that we are not, ever, to drink the blood of the animal. Because the life is in the blood. But now, with the pouring out of the blood of the Messiah, we are told to drink the blood. And there we find life. His life becomes our life. Our life is found in the self-giving death of the Messiah, and that is what we are to embody in our life together.

Communion reminds us that we, as a people, have a storied identity. It is the story of the self-giving Christ. It is the story of our life together. And it is the story of cruciform love. It is the story of the God who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all.

The Dude Abides–This Christmas

September 30, 2010 in Culture, Uncategorized with 4 Comments

True Grit, the Coens’ version.

I. Can’t. Wait.

HT: Carmen Andres

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